No big shock here... the "heavy lifting" part of Windows we've known for years, the desktop Win32/64 OS, is tweaked a little, but otherwise untouched. The future Microsoft seems to see is the new tablet OS, WinRT. That's 32-bit, on systems with 2GB RAM (in fact, a decrease from the typical Win7 PC), on processors that are more or less Atom class (the ARM Cortex 9 and Intel Atom cores are rougly comparable, cycle for cycle performance-wise, though typically Intel's clocked a bit higher).
It's also a bit of a tech regression. Most of the tablets are using DDR2 memory, rather than the DDR3 that's been a PC standard for a couple of years. A few systems use DDR3, but they're more at the higher end.
This amounts to a large scale dumbing down of the Windows experience, and the hardware follows that. Sure, desktops and laptops are the same, but that's just it -- no one's pushing them. Plus, mass market Windows machines, whether tablets, laptops, or desktops for most consumer and business use, are all running integrated graphics. So that's another traditional place for DRAM, and it's increasingly being pushed to the fringe.

I suppose that having skipped over Vista, my recollection is that every new Windows required more processor power and more memory than what came before. So to me, this is a welcome change.
Matter of fact, WinXP became porogressivley worse over time, but perhaps that was caused in part by McAfee. As fast as it was when new, XP on the two machines I had it on became a real dog. And this is in spite of keeping the registry cleaned and the hard drive cleaned and defragged. Bootup became painful, even disk cleanup, which used to be a snap at first, became ridiculous.
To the point that I am convinced that Microsoft does this deliberately, to force people to upgrade. Hopefully they're too busy trying to get their tablets working well that they won't have time to screw around, this time around.

In conjunction with unveiling of EE Times’ Silicon 60 list, journalist & Silicon 60 researcher Peter Clarke hosts a conversation on startups in the electronics industry. One of Silicon Valley's great contributions to the world has been the demonstration of how the application of entrepreneurship and venture capital to electronics and semiconductor hardware can create wealth with developments in semiconductors, displays, design automation, MEMS and across the breadth of hardware developments. But in recent years concerns have been raised that traditional venture capital has turned its back on hardware-related startups in favor of software and Internet applications and services. Panelists from incubators join Peter Clarke in debate.